Top 10 takeaways from the tutoring websites:
1. Struggling writers tend to focus on the mechanics of writing rather than the
ideas they are trying to express. As the tutor, you need to initially focus on
reading the student’s writing versus evaluating it. Later when
the student is more fluent will be a better time to focus on writing conventions
such as spelling and punctuation.
2. Did a teacher or advisor suggest that the student visits the Writing Center? Why? What specifically do you need to know to help the student efficiently? Get answers to these questions before you begin.
3. Teach your student to examine the story before he jumps in to read. Have him take note of any pictures, charts or graphs. Read the title, boldfaced words, underlined words and headlines. Review any new or unfamiliar words. Have your student infer, based on this information, what the story is about.
4. Encourage your student to become an active reader. Show him how to take notes while he is reading. Have him write questions about things he doesn't understand and underline words he doesn't know.
5. Encourage students to pay attention to groups of words that often occur together (“lexical chunks” or “collocations”). If you find vocabulary errors, ask students for alternatives and give them time to think of a few before you make suggestions.
6. Take one or two pages and underline every error you notice without correcting it, then ask the student to try making the corrections. Concentrate on what the students can’t correct independently, then look for subsequent uses (correct and incorrect) of that structure to teach proofreading strategies and reinforce the language lesson.
7. Tutees are famous for keeping silent until their tutor answers all of their
questions or does all their work. In too many of the tutoring sessions, the
tutor does too much talking and the tutee doesn’t do enough. The silent
treatment should be employed by you, and not your tutee. You should give your
tutee ample time to think about a problem or question and respond with an
answer. Remember that your tutee may require more time than you would to come
up with an answer. So, be patient!
8. It’s okay not to know every answer to every problem. Just be honest. Inform
the tutee that you don’t have an answer. When this happens I like to tell the tutee that I will do research and have an answer for them the next time we meet. Then I try to find the answer.
9. A tutor teaches study skills. For some students, the problem is not the course. These students need help with study skills and managing their study time. The tutor can help the student learn how to learn better and faster by organizing how they study.
10. The values we have as regards writing, arguments, structure, and intellectual property are not universal. On the contrary: they differ from culture to culture, making the process of writing a paper for an American academic audience extremely confusing for the ESL writer.
As a beginning tutor & beginning comp certificate student, I haven't thought much about the impact of reading - but the point you make in #4 seems very key to composition as well - being active readers of their own papers. I've noticed that neither of my tutees seem to want to mark anything on their own papers.
ReplyDeleteYour last point is also insightful - our ideas about structure etc seem like a given to us and this seems important to remember, especially with 1.5 or ESL tutees.
Thanks again for your comments, kateb. I actually remember something that Mark said that I find helpful to explain to students when they are reading. I tell them that even the most educated people still can't read and article or essay and remember everything without annotating. I show tell or show my tutees my annotation process and I think it helps them. I like to give special attention to how I write my thoughts and feelings in the margins of the reading. I explain to tutees that this is beneficial for when I have to begin developing an argument. Not only do I know where I stand on the issues, but I've already started to write a little and can also pinpoint some possible evidence I can use to support whatever my argument might be.
ReplyDeleteI think the last point is just something that all tutors should be mindful of. Many of the students we will work with are unfamiliar with the argumentation and struture they will have to use to be sucessful in their American university writing assignments.